The First Person That Came to Mind
Blair swung the wooden plank a moment too late, but the man easily caught it and threw it aside. :contentReference[oaicite:0]{index=0}
Because she had been gripping the plank, Blair fell backward.
“Ugh…”
The man grabbed Blair’s ankle as she tried to retreat.
“I didn’t loosen your arms and legs so you could pull cute tricks like this.
Adorable. Even that frightened expression.”
“Let go!”
Blair struggled desperately, but she was no match for the man’s grip.
The man pinned her down with both legs and pulled a small glass bottle from his pocket.
“If you stay still, I’ll be nice to you.
Alright?”
While screaming and flailing as if grasping at straws, Blair’s hand suddenly caught hold of something.
She swung it desperately.
“Aaah!”
A sharp splinter from the plank slashed across the man’s eye.
“M-my eye!”
The small glass bottle he had been holding dropped and rolled away.
Seeing the blood dripping down, Blair’s body began trembling violently.
But she didn’t have time to freeze.
This was her chance to escape.
Summoning superhuman strength, Blair shoved the man away and ran out of the abandoned house.
“Stop right there!”
Staggering, the man chased after Blair out of the house.
A lake stretched before them, and beside it spread a dense forest.
In that brief moment, Blair had disappeared.
“Ha, damn it…”
The man cursed and looked around.
Before Wesley arrived, he had to capture Blair again and stage the situation.
‘There’s no boat here, so she couldn’t have gone toward the lake.’
Just as the man glanced toward the lake, a rustling sound came from the forest.
He ran in the direction of the sound.
As his presence gradually faded into the distance, the breath that had been suppressed beneath his feet finally escaped.
“Ha…”
Blair had been hiding beneath a large tree root below a small cliff that led to the lake, right beneath where the man had been standing.
She released the hand covering her mouth.
Her entire body trembled and her breathing was ragged.
‘Pull yourself together.
You can’t collapse here.’
Blair forced her shaking body to stand.
Then she ran in the opposite direction from the man.
* * *
Only red blood remained in the abandoned house where the two had vanished.
Herdin approached after discovering it and touched the blood with his gloved hand.
It had not yet dried.
His eyes grew cold.
He quickly surveyed the abandoned house.
As was common for a place long untouched by people, thick dust covered everything.
And on top of it were two sets of footprints.
One belonged to a man.
The other was from a small shoe with a high heel.
Maids wore low shoes for convenience while working.
Therefore, high heels belonged to noblewomen and young ladies.
Herdin spread his hand and measured the size of the remaining shoe prints.
The owner of the shoe had small feet.
About the same size as when he had held Blair’s ankle in bed.
At the starting point of the footprints, there were marks where the dust had been heavily disturbed, along with bloodstains.
Beside them lay a sharp fragment of wooden plank stained with blood.
If the attacker had been the man, he could have easily subdued a woman with such a small frame without needing such a crude weapon.
Which meant it was far more likely that the woman had used the plank as a weapon.
‘The attack landed, the woman escaped, and the man chased after her…’
As Herdin reconstructed the scene, his expression grew increasingly grim.
Standing beside him, Wesley was momentarily flustered by how differently things had unfolded from his plan, but he soon spoke casually.
“I’m sure I heard something earlier…
Maybe it was just the wind—”
Before he could finish, Herdin grabbed Wesley by the collar and slammed him against the wall.
The knights of the Baldwin household behind Wesley immediately drew their swords.
“What do you think you’re doing all of a sudden!”
The Delmark knights also drew their swords in response.
The atmosphere that had felt like walking on thin ice escalated instantly to the brink of violence.
But the man who had caused the situation—Herdin—seemed unconcerned.
“This was your doing, wasn’t it?”
His voice carried the dark chill of the forest.
In Herdin’s eyes as he asked the question were certainty and clear killing intent.
Startled for a moment by that presence, Wesley flinched but soon shouted back boldly.
“W-what are you talking about?
My doing?”
“When you’ve survived countless brushes with death on the battlefield, you develop something called instinct.”
On a battlefield where it was often impossible to tell friend from foe, one eventually learned to distinguish them instinctively before even thinking.
Because if you waited to decide before raising your sword, a blade would already be at your throat.
“My instincts say you’re the enemy.”
“……”
“Can you swear to your innocence?”
Facing Herdin’s cold gaze that seemed certain of his guilt, Wesley swallowed.
But he had left no evidence that he was behind the incident.
The man he had hired to commit the crime had also disappeared.
Confessing now without a single piece of evidence would be foolish.
“This treatment is unfair!
I only came to help since I caused trouble for Your Grace and the Duchess before!”
While protesting, Wesley faltered when he met Herdin’s gaze.
It was a gaze that seemed to see through everything.
The instinct of a beast that bowed before the strong urged him to look away, yet he felt he must not.
Wesley endured the stare as if he were truly innocent.
After watching him for a moment, Herdin released him with a cold sigh, almost throwing him aside.
A Baldwin knight hurriedly supported the staggering Wesley.
Herdin walked toward the Baldwin knights who were still pointing their swords at him and said,
“Move.”
With just one glance and one word from him, the knights retreated, intimidated.
Stepping outside the abandoned house, Herdin lifted his head and looked at the sky.
Through the dense trees, the sunset was slowly spreading.
Since it was still early spring, the days were not very long.
Once the sun set, the temperature in the mountains would drop sharply.
It would practically be winter.
Suddenly, he thought of his wife.
That foolish woman who feared fire yet lived in cold rooms despite having weak lungs and constant coughing.
“Knights.”
The Delmark knights gathered at his single word.
Mounting his horse again, Herdin gave the order.
“Find her.
As quickly as possible.”
There was no need to ask what the omitted object of the sentence was.
* * *
Night arrived early in the forest.
Blair wrapped her clothes tighter against the cold creeping through the gaps and looked around.
‘Where am I?’
Since she had been dragged here by the man while unconscious, she didn’t remember the path she had come from.
She had simply walked blindly in the opposite direction from him with the sole determination to escape, but the entrance to the forest was nowhere in sight.
At some point, it felt like she had been circling the same place repeatedly.
Meanwhile, the darkness slowly descending over the forest pressed down on her like a weight.
Blair moved her feet quickly, trying to escape the darkness.
Her breath was ragged and her legs felt as if they might break, but if she stopped walking it felt as though the forest darkness would swallow her whole.
“Haa…
Haa…”
Her labored breath formed white mist.
Her body began trembling from the cold.
‘It’s so cold…’
As she rubbed her gradually freezing body, something caught Blair’s eye.
‘A cabin?’
Like the abandoned house where the man had held her, it was one of the forest keeper’s huts scattered throughout the woods.
But this cabin also seemed long abandoned, its roof and walls covered thickly with moss.
Just then, the distant cry of a wild animal echoed.
After hesitating for a moment, Blair stepped inside the cabin.
As expected, there were no signs of people.
A rusted pot and a broken chair lay scattered around.
Blair decided it would be better to stay in this cabin rather than wander through the forest.
It was too cold outside, and her heels were torn from walking in shoes she couldn’t bring herself to remove.
She could hardly walk anymore.
‘If I wait, someone will come find me.’
Surely they were searching for her by now.
Blair searched the cabin for something to wrap around herself.
Since she hadn’t been wearing a coat when she was kidnapped, all she had on now was a thin slip and a spring dress.
The only thing she found was a blanket full of holes.
Blair wrapped herself in it anyway and sat in a corner of the cabin away from the window.
At that moment, something pressed beneath her leg.
“This is…”
It was a lighter.
Judging by the faint sloshing sound, a little fuel remained inside.
There was even a fireplace in the cabin.
There were broken wooden furniture pieces that could serve as firewood.
And most importantly, she had a lighter in her hand.
But…
‘Fire…’
The one thing she needed most was the one thing she couldn’t use.
Just thinking about it made her chest tighten and her vision darken.
Blair clutched the lighter with trembling hands from the cold.
As if holding it tightly might somehow warm her.
As her consciousness gradually faded like a flickering flame, a night from long ago suddenly came to mind.
A warm winter night when she had fallen asleep feeling the heat of a fireplace for the first time in a long while—and the face of the man who had silently stayed by her side.
‘You can’t sleep if you light the fireplace by yourself.’
Remembering that voice unconsciously, Blair gave a self-mocking smile.
Of all people, he was the first person who came to mind in this situation…
The thought made her laugh at herself